Must Have Been The Moonlight (39 page)

She was so thirsty, her throat could barely swallow. She breathed it into her lungs and choked. Suddenly, Brianna found new strength. She rolled off the other side of the bed, stumbled and hit the wall.

He seemed startled that she would run from him. Watching her gag, Charles drank from the flask and considered her over the rim. “Fallon has already begun to turn London upside down looking for you.”

She wanted her husband. Needed him desperately. She raised her eyes. “How do you know?” Her voice was a pathetic whisper.

“We’ve just been chatting downstairs. A pleasant chat,
actually. I told him that you belonged to me. Do you know what he did? He left.”

Her gaze flew to the window, where he might even now be outside.

“You needn’t fear me, Miss Donally. I could have taken you many times.” Cross pulled a chain from beneath his shirt and withdrew the amulet. “I came back with you on the steamer. I was in the suk that afternoon you’d gone with your brother. I used to watch you ride. I gave you back your book. I helped you with your research. I wanted you to know that I felt the same about you that you felt for me.”

“I should have known. You quoted Dickens.”

“I know you were forced to marry Fallon.”

Dizziness tried to pull her down. If he’d been the one who returned her book, then…“Your job allowed you to get stolen merchandise and rare antiquities out of the country. You knew which caravans carried valuable goods,” she whispered, the full scope of his crimes hitting her. “You’ve murdered British soldiers, women and children. You would have murdered me.”

“Not you.” He eased around the bed to stand in front of her. “Never you. Don’t you understand?” he rasped, as if she should have no qualm comprehending his motives for everything he’d done. “Selim was in that caravan to see that you weren’t killed. I knew that Lady Alexandra was seeking the location of that Coptic temple and that she’d planned to stop near there. We’d arranged for Pritchards to be the one to take that caravan out of Cairo.”

Tears burned her eyes. She stumbled, then hopped in an effort to maintain her balance.

“Because Major Fallon knew the desert. He would never have depended on the guides,” she said.

Brianna had heard of people who had no moral compass. People unable to grasp the difference between right and wrong. He’d murdered his own father, thought nothing of killing Alex and Michael, and possessed no remorse, no inkling of the horror that he’d wreaked on hundreds.

Somewhere in the madness of her thoughts she heard doors slamming as if from far away. Shouts. “You are very wise, Mr. Cross.” God, he was insane, and she was trying to reason with him. “We could still go away together.” She’d worked one hand loose from the rope.

“I know you’re lying, Brianna.” His knuckles caressed her cheek. “But that doesn’t matter. Soon we’ll be together forever.”

It was then that she smelled smoke. It seeped from the floor like a slow rolling mist rising from a bog. “The wine will make this painless, Miss Donally. Do you know what
suttee
is?”

In that fatal moment, Brianna realized what he had planned. “You are insane!” He’d sent the house up in flames like some ungodly funeral pyre. “I’d as soon go to hell than spend a second in eternity with you!” She stumbled against the wall, hitting her head when she fell. She lay momentarily stunned.

This couldn’t be happening!

“You don’t mean that, Miss Donally.”

In frustrated rage, Brianna hit the wall with her feet. Pain ricocheted up her deadened calves, but she didn’t care, her kid boots absorbed the impact. Soon, plate-size pieces of plaster began to crumble. She screamed for Michael. The wine at least had given her back her voice. Then there was another roar in her ears, as if the sound of the sea crashed through her head. Dizziness pulled her down. She only knew that if she didn’t stay conscious, she would die.

“He’s set the goddamn house on fire!”

Even as Michael watched, a tapestry in the sitting room went up in flames. Fire licked at the photographs on the wall. Boyish faces melted and blackened. Michael’s heart hammered in his chest. He met Donally’s desperate gaze across the corridor. “She has to be here!”

Within a half hour, six of Cross’s men were stripped of arms and lying facedown on the drive. Panic had erupted
into chaos as the first hint of smoke touched the air. But there was no sign of Cross. Michael and Donally had been tearing the house up looking for Brianna.

“The carriage is inside the cottage at the back,” Finley gasped as he ducked around the corner into the narrow smoke-filled corridor. “Your wife’s trunks are still inside.”

Michael’s blood ran icy cold. “We’ve missed a door someplace,” he shouted to Donally, rolling his hand to signal that he should go back into the cellar. Michael took the stairs, his eyes on the walls and the floor, looking for someplace that pulled at the tendrils of smoke.

“Here!” Finley yelled, laying a shoulder against the wall, nearly crashing through to the corridor on the other side.

Michael took the long staircase into the darkness. “Listen!”

Above the shouts and gunshots outside, he could hear something banging. He followed the noise down the hall, throwing open doors until he reached one that was locked. “Brianna!”

Michael smashed his boot heel against the metal plate of the door. Brianna was somewhere inside, and then he forgot to care whether there might be more men about as he emptied his gun into the lock and kicked open the door. There was a deadliness about him as he ducked inside the smoke-filled chamber.

“Get Donally out of the basement,” he called to Finley. “I’ve found her.”

The vision of Brianna dead would haunt him until he could no longer bear it. Seeing her lying motionless on the ground, her knees bent against the wall, her face turned toward the window, he ran to kneel beside her. Cross sat unmoving against the back of the bed.

Then Michael was sawing at the ropes on her wrists and ankles and pulling her into his arms. Somewhere, he heard shouts, but the only reality was Brianna in arms, his mouth pressed to hers, holding her to his heart as if he feared that she might somehow get away.

“You’re late, Ravenspur,” he heard her hoarse whisper.

“It’s a big house,
amîri
.”

He had known little of love his whole life, even less of tenderness, but today he’d learned what it was truly like to lose both, and he never wanted to know that devastation again. He lifted her into his arms. “It was Charles Cross all the time,” she murmured.

“I know.”

“He’s Omar’s son,” Brianna murmured.

Michael had guessed that much when he recognized the second boy in the photo as Omar’s youngest son. Her head lulled against his shoulder. He swung around to get out of the room. Cross moved, and Michael was suddenly looking into his eyes. The man was still alive.

“It won’t matter what you do,” his voice whispered. “Where we’re going, you can’t follow.”

Michael saw an amulet clutched in his hand.

“The amulet,” she whispered. “Get it off me. Now.”

He pulled the chain over her neck. “Where you’re going, she’ll never be—” Michael tossed the amulet at Cross. “You bastard.”

Brianna murmured, and Michael knew she was slipping out of consciousness. He turned with her in his arms. The corridor was narrow. Then he was running. Whatever happened to Cross would be in the hands of a far higher power than his. Smoke burned his eyes. He had to get out of the house. Bars covered the windows. Michael broke the glass in the bedroom. He kicked at the bars, but nothing moved. He did the same for both windows. The bars were solid iron. He stopped in the doorway, pushed back by the flames that had already consumed the front of the house. Helped by kerosene, flames caught the draperies and chased up the walls to lick at the ceiling. Light fixtures shattered.

With an oath, Michael turned and ran back up the narrow stairway, encountering smoke rising from the floor below. He could only pray that the stairs led to the roof and that he could get down from there.

Gunshot splintered the wood next to his head. “Burn, Fallon!” Cross stood at the top of the stairs, blocking their escape.

“Can you stand?” Michael asked Brianna, setting her down behind him.

“I would fly if you asked,” she murmured with a weak smile.

Tilting her head, he looked into her eyes. Barbiturates.

Michael didn’t know how much she’d consumed. Cross had fed her the same drug given to widows in India who were burned to death on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Reaching behind him, he pulled the revolver from his belt and checked the load. One
fucking
bullet. Brianna leaned a shoulder against the wall. Another bullet smashed into the doorjamb, then another. His heart pounding slowly, heavily, Michael knew he had no choice but to step into that stairwell. He must take a chance on getting shot. But regardless, he had to take out Cross.

Michael stepped into the stairwell. A bullet creased his sleeve. Cross had panicked and fired too soon. Michael’s arm was already raised. He fired and hit Cross between the eyes. Cross fell against the wall.

Michael turned for Brianna and found her eyes wide on his. He pulled her into his arms and ran up the stairs. He found a way to one of the turrets on the roof. Smoke bellowed from the windows below.

“We have to climb,” Brianna said, stumbling toward the branches of a tree. Michael grabbed her hand and looked down. A long way down.

Then he was stripping off her skirt to her chemise. He held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. They could both die leaping onto those branches, and he had something to tell her, so help him God.

“I know,” she said before he could voice the words. “I love you, too, but if we don’t get off this roof none of that will matter.”

Michael stopped her. He kissed her lips, brushed the hair from her sooty face, and kissed her again. Then he lowered her to the thickest branch about three feet below the turret.

“I’m not watching,” he said. “Christ…”

But he did watch, helplessly, as she wobbled to the center of the tree and started down, disappearing into the thick smoke. Michael jumped across and soon he’d caught up to her. Donally and Finley waited below, and when they hit the ground, they started running. Behind him the fire burned. The scene was dramatic. People had moved away from the yard.

Michael stood on the drive watching the flames lick at the sky before turning to join Brianna inside the carriage. She was conscious, her hair singed, her face black, and he pulled her into his lap.

“How did you know I was in that house?” she whispered.

The shouts had disappeared, and a pale stretch of light, faintly purple, had begun to change the sky. “English roses,” he said against her hair, and he felt the smile on her lips, the welcoming embrace of relief as he held her. “It was the same scent that led me to you before.”

In a world far away, a long time ago when he’d found her veil in the desert. Michael tried to explain what he’d meant, but it didn’t seem to matter, for she knew. “It took you long enough, Ravenspur.”

And he knew that she’d be all right.

“C
ross might have gotten away if she hadn’t shot him.” Michael raised a steaming mug of chocolate to his lips and drank. “Selim has been convicted of three counts of murder and accessory to murder for crimes committed against everyone found in the carriage. The verdict was issued yesterday.”

“Thank you Jesus that most of this was left out of the newspaper,” Ryan said, stabbing a cigar in an ashtray at his elbow.

The sun had risen hours ago, and the men gathered around the settee and chairs in Christopher Donally’s library remained tense, though no one admitted as much. Setting the mug down, Michael leaned forward on his knees. “You owe Ware for keeping this out of the papers,” he said, looking at the faces of Brianna’s brothers gathered around the chairs.

Michael noticed the cozy picture they made. In contrast, Lord Ware stood outside the circle of camaraderie with his hands clasped behind him. “It seemed that Charles Cross sailed from Alexandria under the name of Solomon.” Ware’s hand opened and closed over the head of his cane. “It was his legitimate name. From what we could discern, their
father took both boys away from their mother to Egypt after she killed herself. Cross returned later and was educated here when he turned seventeen. Whatever he felt for his father had only festered.”

Brianna stood at the top of the stairs and listened to the low voices gathered in the library. Dressed in workable muslin, with her hair bound back with a scarf, she’d hesitated at the railing long enough before setting her foot to the stairs. It had been three weeks since the incident with Charles Cross.

When she’d awakened from the ordeal, she found herself back at Christopher’s house. Charles Cross had reentered her life and nearly stolen everything, yet for all that he’d done, she didn’t hate him. She’d pitied him and had wept for him, for babies are not born monsters.

She’d not seen Michael for two days afterward, as she sat like an invalid in bed, eating everything given to her. Praying that her baby was all right. Selim had not died but had been held over for prosecution. He’d provided a wealth of information, spilling the details of caravan attacks they’d carried out over the last two years, as well as the location of the gold they’d stolen. She could not fathom the depth of his insanity, the tragedy of his life, and for all that he’d talked and pointed fingers at others, that he’d not saved himself from the gallows.

Outside, her brothers’ children played, their laughter cleansing her thoughts. Amber had come up last week. Caroline was in town for the start of the Season. Parliament began session three days ago and Michael had taken his seat.

Life continued.

Brianna now stood in the doorway of the library, the familiar smell of leather-bound tomes hidden somewhere beneath the smell of bourbon and cigars. On a low table in front of the settee and high-back chairs, an empty captain’s decanter sat on a polished silver tray surrounded by cut crystal. Colin and his family had arrived last night from Carlisle. Wearing tall riding boots, he looked as if he’d just returned
from the stables. Johnny sat beside him. His oldest twins were tearing up the yard. David, who was just below Christopher in the Donally pecking order, would not be in from Ireland for a few days. And Ryan sat beside her husband, one booted ankle lying casually across his knee.

A breeze from the open French doors pulled gently at her skirts.

Looking across the room at her husband sitting among her brothers, Brianna watched as his gaze lifted to her, and felt the same constriction in her throat she always felt when his eyes touched hers. She’d been upstairs with Johnny and Colin’s wives all night. Christopher had taken his place beside Alex this morning as he anxiously awaited the birth of his children, for he was the new father of twins. The concern she glimpsed in Michael’s gaze transformed as he saw what she held in her arms.

Brianna’s gaze lowered to the swaddled bundle she cradled to her chest. Those blue eyes held her in a trance as the miracle of life revealed itself in the sudden vent of protest that could be heard all over the house. The plump, round features scrunched in fury. Already this new Donally was wreaking changes on the world around him.

“Where is the new father?” Ryan asked.

“He is with his wife upstairs.”

“Hell, Chris is going to be needin’ this more than we are!” Johnny laughed, setting down the bottle of bourbon in his hands.

Her family suddenly surrounded her, but it was to the grandfather who stood off to the side that she handed the little boy, and his watery eyes seemed unable to lift from the tiny being that filled his awkward hands. “Your granddaughter has just made her entrance and will be down shortly.” Brianna thought of her own mother-in-law, and realized sadly that some chasms might never be spanned, but this one possibly could.

An arm was wrapped around her waist and Brianna let herself be pulled from the crowd.

Michael brought her hand to his mouth and rubbed her knuckles over his lips. “Maybe it’s time I put your mind on something else.”

“Like what?” Her back pressed to his chest.

“Like this.” He pulled her against him. “Maybe we should announce that we’ve made one of our own.” His laugh was warm and close to her ear.

Leaning her head back against his shoulder, Brianna closed her eyes as his mouth touched her temple and moved lower.

Brianna loved her proud, aristocratic husband, but she knew beneath the fervor of his lover’s embrace that this was no happy ending to their life. Instead, it was the promise of a new beginning.

Theirs would not be an easy course to traverse. The future by its very definition meant uncertainty, but both of them had the ability to make a difference in this world. Whatever lay ahead, they were far stronger walking this road together than alone.

And since when had either of them allowed adversity to stop them?

His mouth drifted from her temple to the hollow of her throat. “I love you,
amîri
.”

Smiling to herself, she stopped thinking as his lips pressed seamlessly to hers.

She wanted him to take her home.

Home, where dreams were like the rolling, golden dunes of a desert dawn, ever changing and infinite.

Where the foundation for the finest house could be built from the tiniest grain of sand and a touch of moonlight.

Where the magic they’d discovered one enchanted evening in a faraway land would endure to grow and nurture generations to come.

Indeed, the possibilities were endless.